Here’s a painting from nearly 15 years ago – one of the first I did. It was painted on the back of a placard/protest sign that I had previously used in a satirical community play I wrote called ‘The History of Llangennech – Part 2’

Blodyn has become a bit of an icon for me since I painted her. She was used on the cover of my poetry collection “The Words in Me” and will be used again on the cover of my new collection “More Words in Me” due to be published in a couple of months.

What do I mean? I mean this is a short story with no style and no substance.
Why?
Why not? Style is taste, substance is an illusion.
Fair enough, but I don’t understand.
You don’t need to.
I mean I don’t understand the point of it.
Of what?
Your short story. This.
Nor me. In fact I’d go so far as to say that there is no point to it.
But what’s the point of that? Why should I read it?
I don’t know. Do you need a reason?
Well, yes, otherwise I’d be wasting my time, my breath, my life.
Look at me shrugging. Read what you like, or not. Who cares?
Well, you should, it’s your short story. Don’t you want people to read it?
Yes of course, but I still don’t care if they do or not.
That’s weird.
If you say so.
So what’s it about?
Nothing. It’s got no substance.
What’s the point . . . oh, never mind.
Good, you’re learning.
No I’m not.
Yes you are. You’ve learned that there’s no point.
No point to what?
No point trying to find a point in something that has no point.
Clever sod!
OK. If you say so.
I was being sarcastic.
Why?
Because you’re winding me up.
Why?
Because of your stupid story that has no style and no substance.
And no point.
Exactly.
So what’s the problem then?
You’re doing my head in.
Why?
With all this story nonsense.
Well you don’t have to read it.
You’re right.
Fuck off then . . . .

I wrote a play a long time ago called ‘Tossers’. Looking for a tag to describe what sort of play it was, I dubbed it ‘a surreal pointless play’. There’s no point me trying to describe it because it actually is a surreal pointless play. It was performed as part of the On the Edge series at Chapter Arts Centre around ten years ago and it went down well. You can read it by clicking here.

So, why doesn’t it matter in the end, or indeed at any other time? Well, the truth is that it doesn’t matter because whatever it is, it is so tiny and insignificant that it has no effect, so doesn’t matter. On the always present other hand, it, whatever it is, is all that matters. Trouble is it’s quite impossible for me to convey the meaning of what I’m trying to say by describing it in this way, so like many who are trying to describe the indescribable I turn to some form of art – in this case words, put together in the form of a stage play.

I wrote another play with a similar idea behind it called ‘it doesn’t matter’. That play has yet to be produced but you can read it by clicking here.

The point is that there is no point, but, that doesn’t matter either. And there’s no point me going on trying to explain it – what I’m saying might be, and probably is, a load of bollocks anyway.

Another way of thinking about it is that . . . . oh who am I kidding, I can’t describe it, so let’s just sit back, breathe deeply and enjoy the view.

An enjoyable view?

And it carries on anyway, whether you’re in the game or not, whether it even is a game or not.

Do you think the universe is dissolving into a kind of smear? Maybe smear is too dirty a word – perhaps kaleidoscope is better? Except the word kaleidoscope implies patterns and all I can see is a randomness. something like the image below.

Portion of sky photographed by the Hubble Telescope

That’s one way of looking at it I suppose.

And with that, a week of writing a blog post every day comes to an end. It was an experiment. I don’t know if it will carry on.

While working on my next novel ‘Bums’ which will be published in the Spring of 2015, I have been distracting myself by putting together a volume of other bits and pieces, called for the Time Being.

It’s going to end up as a 200 page paperback book and will be published in late October or early November 2014.

For the Time Being is a bringing together of short stories, plays, poems, snippets and other fragments of my writing. Some of it is brand new, other pieces have been lurking in drawers for decades. Some of the work has been exhaustively edited while some is still red raw. Some of the work has already been published on this blog in one form or another, some of it emerged as I was putting the book together.

I don’t know if the book has any commercial viability – probably not, but I don’t really care – it’s primary purpose is as a distraction for me and something for me to read in my dotage – the pure essence of self-publishing if you like.

There will be more information about the book on Opening Chapter’s website when it’s available.

The nostalgic mood continues. Here are the first two episodes of a soap-opera / drama thing I started writing specifically for publication on the Internet in its early days – 1996. The idea was that it would be published online in short sharp episodes using only text in a visual style, though there were always plans to add pictures and possibly videos when the technology got fast enough to make that viable. Maybe it’s time to do that now?

Related Posts:

Tossers is a surreal pointless play first presented by Michael Kelligan as part of the On the Edge series of script held performances at Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. The play includes three poems one of which is included in the extract below. Continue reading →

Coming up: Friday June 1st and Saturday June 2nd 2018, Cardiff Central Library has organised this unique and very special event. I’m very pleased that I was invited to take …

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